How to use recovery CDs and load original factory software on my Toshiba laptop?
How to use recovery CDs and load original software on my Toshiba laptop?
Most laptops are supplied with a recovery CD (sometimes more then one) or a recovery DVD disk. For some newer models you have to create a set of recovery CDs yourself by running special software preinstalled on your laptop. The recovery disk will help you to re-image the laptop hard drive back to original factory defaults. If you don’t have recovery CDs, then try to contact the manufacturer and buy it from them. A regular Toshiba recovery disk includes an operating system, some default software and all device drivers. When you re-image the drive, all personal data and all software you installed after you bought the laptop will be ERASED. Do not forget to back up all important files before you re-image the hard drive. You can transfer important files to another computer over the network, transfer them to an external hard drive or a USB flash drive, burn them on a CD, etc. It is very easy to re-image the drive. You have to insert the recovery media inside the optical drive and restart the laptop. Make sure to set the DVD/CD drive as a first boot device, so the laptop starts to boot from your recovery disk. After that just follow the wizard. For newer Toshiba laptops you can press F12 on startup to select the boot device. Re-imaging the hard drive takes in general 30-60 minutes.
Do you need spare parts for your laptop? Search here by the laptop model and part description.
March 10th, 2010 at 6:41 pm
When trying to recover my toshiba equium with disc I get an error? HELP!?
I’ve had my laptop roughly about two years now, it’s a Toshiba Equium L40-17M series.
I got it with a recovery disc and have used the disk successfully in the past to recover my laptop to it’s factory settings perfectly. I noticed that my Vista drive was getting full and after many attempts to solve this I eventually decided to just recover it and start again.
So I took all the files I wanted and stored them on several memory devices. I then deleted what I didn’t want and emptied the files from the recycle bin and followed the instructions given on the disc cover telling me to ;
Insert the first disc into the drive and shut down the computer.
Turn on your computer while keeping the F12 key pressed.
Use the cursor keys to select the optical disc drive in the menu.
Follow instructions which are appearing on the screen.
I did all these things and clicked the OK button warning me that “My hard disk will be completely erased. Do you really want to continue”. It then whizzes through some technical stuff that I would never understand and shows me two errors reading “Error: Could not open WIM file F:5903XSP.swm!
ERROR: RecoWMAInfo.exe did not run properly!”
I just wanna know whats going on
!?
Help please
December 6th, 2009 at 10:00 pm
I’m trying to reformat my Toshiba laptop and when I use the Recovery Disk I get to the screen where it tells me that all contents of my hard drive will be erased and replaced if I select OK. For OK I’m supposed to press F1 and to Cancel press F2. When I press F1 nothing happens. F2 works and cancels the process so I don’t think it’s the keyboard and the disk loads up to this point so I don’t think it’s not reading the disk. I’ve tried looking online and it appears that others have had this problem but I couldn’t find any solutions. Any ideas? Thanks!
December 3rd, 2009 at 5:11 am
hello, I have toshiba m115-3094 with xp media center addition.
recently,my laptop was infected with viruses and i can no longer boot up the windows. Is there any way to recover the data in the corrupted hard drive before I use the recovery disk to reset the laptop to factory setting?
October 16th, 2009 at 4:24 am
Hi,
I recently purchased a Toshiba Satellite L500 running Windows Vista Home Premium, Service Pack 2. As with any new computer, it came with a lot of “bloatware” which I have pretty much all uninstalled except 1. The computer comes with a trial version of Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007. When I try to uninstall this program I receive a message saying that I need to run the recovery discs in order to remove the program. Will that not undo everything I’ve done? Wouldn’t be so bad if I hadn’t already installed the programs that I want to use. If so, is there an alternative method I can use for removing this trial version of Office from my laptop?
Thank you,
Kim
September 23rd, 2009 at 8:18 am
kat,
Toshiba doesn’t separate OS and drivers. The drivers are embedded into the image on the recovery disc/discs.
Are you using the original recovery disc?
Usually it’s very easy to reinstall factory software on a Toshiba laptop. You simply boot the laptop from the recovery disc and follow instructions. You just have to wait until the entire recovery process is done, do not pull the CD before that. Even though the laptop says: “Installation is complete. Shutting down”, do not remove the CD, let it finish.
When the recovery process is done, it will shut down by itself or take you to the screen where you have to type your user name.
September 23rd, 2009 at 12:27 am
im reformatting my toshiba loptop and it was smooth sailing together with my vista as an os but my problem is i dont know how to recover my driver utilities and softwares.i didnt use the 2nd cd of the recovery so i thought the drivers are in it.how will i install them?i dont know how to so please help me….
September 13th, 2009 at 5:06 pm
Hi. I have a Emachine laptop and I was wondering is it a good computer to invest in if I am just doing school work and checking my account through my bank? What are the bad aspects of an Emachine?
September 7th, 2009 at 10:19 pm
Hi, I have a toshiba with win xp home. i installed win xp prof… and partitioned the hard disk into 2. now i want to use the recovery cd and get the original factory settings. How can i do it?
August 30th, 2009 at 6:21 pm
I have a Toshiba Portegr 3480ct notebook, when i power on the screen is blank and if i press the f12 key it says nrrd bios update another thing is that it doesnot read the hard disc. I am new in this field
August 17th, 2009 at 9:38 pm
Melody,
There is noting wrong with your restore CD or laptop.
You are getting this error message because the motherboard doesn’t have correct DMI string. The DMI string includes the laptop name and model. Apparently the motherboard hasn’t been programmed correctly at the factory or service center (if they replaced the motherboard).
You cannot change the DMI string at home. You’ll have to ship your laptop to Toshiba depot or authorized service center.
Call Toshiba, explain what’s going on and ask them to set the DMI string at no charge. It’s not your fault.
August 17th, 2009 at 5:09 pm
I have a M115 I think it’s a bit old, but I had recently got some type of virus and when I try to reboot with C or F12, then press F1, the ‘wrong machine’ msg comes up. I have tried to change to Q: then cd\base, then Os or Os.bat but it keeps saying bad file name. is there another way to fix that? The reboot CD came with original package so I’m sure it’s not the wrong machine!! please help!! Thank you
June 29th, 2009 at 5:16 pm
My HP laptop is three years old. The monitor went out. I had a three year extended warranty and sent it in to be repaired.
It came back repaired but without an operating system which was XP Home. I bought a set of recovery disks from HP but I can’t get the laptop to boot from the disk drive. The boot order won’t work after selecting the cdrom drive. It repeatedly goes to a MicroMedics screen telling me to use the recovery disks to boot the computer.
Your thoughts please.
Thank you,
Larry
June 3rd, 2009 at 5:46 pm
HI I HAVE A TOSHIBA LAPTOP PORTEGE 3480CT WITH THE SERIES# 60742071U -1 AND A PART# PP348U-4PU86 IT COMPUTER LOSE THE WINDOWS FILE, IT NOT OPEN NATHI AND I CANT MAKE ANY TO START IT COMPUTER NOT USE CD ROM. AND I CANT RESTORE AND I NOT HAVE NOTHING CD RESTORER PLEASE I NEED HELP,. I NEED RESTORE MY COMPUTER THANKS
May 26th, 2009 at 5:32 am
I also recieved this error message(10-FC12-0241) toshiba said I have a bad hard drive.. (out of warranty) I installed XP Pro and windows 7 (RC1). All utilities say the hard drive is fine. I will try removing memory next
Thanks
May 17th, 2009 at 10:02 pm
I have lost the second part of the CDs recovery of my Toshiba laptop. To buy it again make me feel not good. Is there a possiblity to get it from internet.
Thanks for reply and support
April 8th, 2009 at 2:08 am
Acer aspire 6930, I replaced DIMM and HDD
The system takes very slow when I run e-recovery while the HDD is still busy flash
March 25th, 2009 at 2:25 pm
Hi
I have a dell latitude c400 laptop and when i received it, i never changed the admin. user. so i just downloaded all my programs and movies etc to that. when i decided to create a new user, it took over the admin user and everything i had downloaded disappeared. I cant search for it, its hiding. Now I want to erase everything and start from scratch. Tho i dont have any operating cds. Can I use any master cd to reset it? Is there something better I can do??
March 25th, 2009 at 1:01 pm
I have a Toshiba Satellite A135-S4527. I can’t find my restore/recovery CD/DVD. Do you know where I can download this program? Thanks in advance.
March 24th, 2009 at 8:32 pm
[...] After editing the registry and removing the upper and lower filters your laptop started reading CDs and DVDs and it tells me your hardware is working fine. You have a software related problem. I think the best way to fix it would be reimaging the hard drive with the recovery disc. Before you do that, back up all personal files to a safe location – external USB drive or hard drive. The recovery process will erase everything from the hard drive and reinstall everything back to factory defaults. It should fix your problem with reading CDs and DVDs. After that you can start over on a freshly installed operating system. [...]
March 24th, 2009 at 8:27 pm
[...] You can get this message if the hard dive is bad OR there is no operating system installed. Didn’t you forget to reimage the hard drive using the recovery disc which usually comes with a laptop? This process will reinstall the operating system and software back to factory defaults. [...]
March 18th, 2009 at 7:20 pm
i have a satellite M305D- S4830 laptop and i am currently trying to reformat it with the recovery disk, but i keep getting an error 10-fc12-0241 please someone help me. I did everything possible, but that same error just keeps popping up and shut downs my laptop.
March 17th, 2009 at 10:23 pm
i bought a new toshiba laptop with nor dreivers disk neither operating system does that mean you did not put it what if the laptop need them?
February 26th, 2009 at 2:57 pm
I figured it out! Vista is the issue!!!!!!!!! After fighting with my computer for a couple of days, I decided to try installing XP Pro instead. It installed with no problems whatsoever! I had to update a ton of drivers, but since I ditched Vista for XP Pro, my computer runs faster & better than ever! Vista BLOWS!!!!!!!!!!!
February 26th, 2009 at 3:01 am
I have a toshiba a205-s4777 I can’t recover it with the recovery disks cause it get threw the first one fine but the secound disk stops about 40% and gives me a error: 10-FC12-045D and I have not a clue what to do.
February 19th, 2009 at 12:28 am
Has anyone been able to help any of us poor slubs that foolishly purchased a Toshiba laptop. Biggest mistake of my life!
My problem is the same as everyone else’s. I tried to run the recovery process & get numerous errors. (10-FC12-0241 & 10-FC12-007B). This isn’t the first time I’ve had a problem with my laptop. I actually had it serviced by a Toshiba repair facility in November.
Toshiba told me that my original problem was a corrupt HDD. The repair place replaced the hard drive & they couldn’t get it to work. They replaced more parts & had the same issue. They had me call Toshiba & get another set of recovery CDs. Still had issues. They ended up gettong it to work by fiddling with the RAM (they took a chip out…at least that’s what they said they did). That was OBVIOUSLY not the solution! Since I got it back from them:
it goes to a black screen after being on for more than 6 hours. (had to turn it off & deal with the “Windows did not shut down properly” BS!
Windows Explorer would stop working on a regular basis. (had to restart or close the program over & over & over again!)
then, this morning, got the “blue screen of death”
I’ve been trying to recover the dumb thing for 16 hours now!
I got close a couple of times, but never made it past 30%.
Please help!!!!!!!!!!!
I think the problem is actually Vista. Either that, or Toshiba just makes a really inferior product!
February 17th, 2009 at 12:03 pm
Well, my computer was working fine, untill this morning. I tried to turn it on, but it stayed at the “Enter Safe Mode…ETC” window. I tried to start it normally but It keep’s returning to the same window. I tried recovering it, but It stopped at about 50% and it Said it was unable to save some files to the location. Any help? Tosiba Satellite A100/A105 Series
January 24th, 2009 at 11:08 pm
Hello All,
Curious enough I had the same 10-FC12-0241 when trying to restore my Satellite P105, the computer came with 2GB of RAM so I removed one of the two chips and it worked!, the restore finished successfully. Once the computer was restored I added back the RAM and everything is now working. By the way, the RAM manufacturer is Samsung which suggests that it is not the brand of the chip, But rather that the real issue is with the Recovery Software, apparently it cannot handle large amounts of memory.
Thank you all for your help!
January 12th, 2009 at 10:06 am
I have a sister who was given a Toshiba Satellite L35-S2316 for her birthday a year an half ago by her b/f. Naturally, it came with Vista and they decided to take it off and put XP on it without realizing that this laptop wasn’t made for XP and there are next to no drivers that work for it. An IT friend of mine then restored the laptop to Vista and we gave it back to her, in working condition. She hasn’t used it at all while she’s been waiting for her b/f to set up the Wi-Fi… (been waiting a year or more now!) At any rate, she decided to take it upon herself to figure it out and spent many hours the other day on the phone with Verizon DSL and then Toshiba. (She knows nothing of computers and probably shouldn’t have touched anything.) She managed to get the Wi-Fi setup with her router and DSL thru her desktop pc. BUT when she went to set it up with her laptop she ended up screwing something up and now Vista won’t boot. Since the laptop is now out of warranty and Toshiba want’s $400 to ship it to them to fix, she asked if I’d have my IT friend look at it again and FedEx’d it to me. I decided to take a look at it first since I know quite a bit more than she does about PCs thru trial-and-error with my own problems but not enough to consider myself ‘techie’. She was then told by Toshiba Support to use the Recovery Disk to Restore to Out-Of-Box settings but it didn’t work.
I tried it myself thinking she was doing something wrong. The machine returns the Recovery Error Message: 10-FC12-0241 after attempting to go thru the recovery process. I tried to run the Startup Repair and got a message back that ‘Startup Repair cannot repair this computer automatically.’ In the details, Problem Signature 06: says OxVersionMismatch. Startup Repair Diagnosis & Repair Log mentions ‘Root Cause Found: The Operating System Version is Incompatible with Startup Repair’. So I didn’t know if this was a conflict with anything the XP install may have done. At this point, since nothing is working I have it completely reformatting the hard drive at this time (5 hours to go). I figured it couldn’t hurt and then I will try the Recovery Disk again. (I probably shouldn’t be touching the machine either but I thought maybe I’d see something she had no clue of.) I was just wondering if any of this will work or is it truly a hardware issue??? I’ve no problem opening a desktop pc and upgrading memory, drives, fans, etc. but I’ve never opened a laptop. I suppose I should let my IT friend deal with it then huh?
I’ve been reading many of the posts here and see a common reply of issues with hard drives or memory chips. If she has to sink money into a laptop she’s hardly used, she won’t be too happy. I was hoping the solution would be less expensive. One things foe sure, I’D NEVER buy a Toshiba!!! Sounds to me like they’re just screwing over thier customers with faulty hardware & software with an inferior product. Just looking for some input.. has anyone with the same Model had this issue and solved it??
Thanks for any comments!
January 8th, 2009 at 3:43 pm
katie,
Yes. If it’s not working and the laptop will not turn off then press on the button and hold it down for about 5-8 seconds. The laptop will shut down.
It depends on the model of your laptop. Could take somewhere from 40 minutes to 1.5 hours. It depends.
January 8th, 2009 at 3:38 pm
Thank you this is very helpful. However, do I restart the computer by pressing the power button off then on again? And how long the the entire process usually take? Thank you again Katie